A racist says sorry

Elwin Hope Wilson holds a framed photo he kept showing a mob he participated in during one of local civil rights "sit-ins" that took place in the early 1960s, as he sits at home Wednesday, March 4, 2009, in Rock Hill, S.C. Several of the clocks he collects are in the background.MARY ANN CHASTAIN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ROCK HILL, S.C. Elwin Hope Wilson sits in his Tillman Street home, a sad, sickly man haunted by time. All around are antique clocks, at least a hundred of them, ticking, chiming and clanging in an hourly cacophony that measures the passing days.

Why clocks, his wife Judy asks, but he offers no answer.

Wilson doesn't have answers for much of how he has lived his life - not for all the black people he beat up, not for all the venom he spewed, not for all the time wasted in hate.

Now 72 and ailing, his body swollen by diabetes, Wilson is spending as many hours pondering his past as he is his mortality.

The former Ku Klux Klan supporter says he wants to apologize for hanging a black doll in a noose at the end of his drive, for flinging cantaloupes at black men walking down Main Street, for once hurling a jack handle at a black kid, for brutally beating a 21-year-old seminary student at the bus station in 1961.

In the final chapter of his life, Wilson is seeking forgiveness. The burly clock collector wants to be saved before he hears his last chime.

And so Wilson has spent recent months apologizing to "the people I had trouble with." He has embraced black men his own age, at the same lunch counter where once they were denied service and hauled off to jail.

Wilson has carried his apology into black churches where he has unburdened it in prayer.

And he has taken it to Washington, to the office of Congressman John Lewis of Atlanta, the civil rights leader whose face Wilson smashed at the Greyhound bus station during the famed Freedom Rides 48 years ago.

The apologies have won headlines and praise. Strangers, black and white, have hailed him as a hero.

But Wilson feels confused. He cannot fully answer the lingering questions, the doubts. Where did all the hate come from? And where did it go?

"All I can say is that it has bothered me for years," Wilson says. "And I found out there is no way I could be saved and get to heaven and still not like blacks."

•••

Wilson has a pale face, thin white hair and small pursed lips that rarely smile. He doesn't care what people think of him and bluntly declares, "I might like you one day and not the next."

Wilson's 49-year-old son, Chris, describes his deep embarrassment growing up with a father who would holler at blacks in restaurants, sneer at them in public, brazenly use the N-word in front of Chris' teen friends.

Wilson seems unsure where his racism originated. It wasn't inherited, he says. He was an only child; his parents treated everyone equally, though Wilson says his father, a gas station owner, once told him that his grandfather and grandfather's brothers had been involved with the Klan.

"I guess it was just the crowd I ran with," Wilson says with a shrug. "It was sport."

Sport was running moonshine with the likes of Junior Johnson, the famed NASCAR driver who honed his skills outracing police on the back roads of Wilkes County, N.C. Sport was gunning his 1955 Chevrolet - his "little red wagon" - in drag races all over the state.

Sport was marching down Main Street behind hooded members of the KKK. And taunting the young black students who walked silently to the segregated lunch counters of Woolworth's and McCrory's only to get arrested by police.

And sport was laying in wait for a certain bus to pull into the Greyhound depot on May 9, 1961. Freedom Riders, they were called, black and white students traveling through the South, testing the new desegregation laws at bus station restaurants and restrooms.

In his autobiography Lewis described what happened.

"Other side, nigger," one of the two said, stepping in my way as I began to walk through the door. He pointed to a door down the way with a sign that said 'COLORED.'... The next thing I knew, a fist smashed the right side of my head. Then another hit me square in the face. As I fell to the floor I could feel feet kicking me hard in the sides. I could taste blood in my mouth."

Wilson winces as he reads the passage from a copy of the book that Lewis gave him. For years he didn't know the identity of the man he had beaten, though he says that over time, guilt began weighing heavy on his heart.

These are the men whom Wilson taunted all those years ago. The men to whom he has been apologizing in recent months.

Their names are engraved on the stools at the counter of the Old Town Bistro on Main Street. The former McCrory's is now a family-run restaurant where waitresses greet regulars by name and pour endless cups of coffee for patrons, black and white.

And yet it is impossible not to feel transported in time.

Sepia-toned photographs hang on the walls, images of young black men at this very counter, where "temporarily closed" signs went up as soon as they sat down.

Outside, a historic plaque marks the spot where nine Friendship Junior College students took an extraordinary stand on Jan. 31, 1961, choosing jail rather than bail after being arrested for ordering lunch. Convicted of trespassing and breach of peace, the students endured a month's hard labor in a chain gang rather than allow civil rights groups pay for their release. The "Friendship Nine" drew national headlines and soon the policy of "jail, no bail" was being emulated all over the South.

McCleod and Massey, now in their 60s, smile as they recall those days - how young and foolish they were, how filled with conviction and pride. And they describe the swirl of emotions they feel, even now, when they return to this place. There is joy and sadness, says McCleod. Joy at what they accomplished. Sadness that there was such hate.

The men say they never thought about their tormentors as individuals with real lives and real names. So it has been strange and somewhat discomforting to suddenly be confronted by a real name, a real man, a white bigot who wants to repent.

Elwin Hope Wilson holds a framed photo he kept showing a mob he participated in during one of local civil rights "sit-ins" that took place in the early 1960s, as he sits at home Wednesday, March 4, 2009, in Rock Hill, S.C. Several of the clocks he collects are in the background. MARY ANN CHASTAIN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Elwin Hope Wilson holds a framed photo he kept showing a mob he participated in during one of the local civil rights "sit-ins" that took place in the early 1960s, as he sits at home Wednesday, March 4, 2009, in Rock Hill, S.C. MARY ANN CHASTAIN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Clarence Bradley sits on the couch Wednesday, March 4, 2009, in McConnells, S.C. It was here where Elwin Hope Wilson prayed for salvation with Bradley, leading Wilson to apologize for his racist actions in the 1960s when he was a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan. Bradley says he never shared Wilson's bitterness or hate. MARY ANN CHASTAIN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Elwin Hope Wilson reads a book of poetry titled "Hope" Wednesday, March 4, 2009, that was given to him by an African American woman who was moved by his apology for violent acts in the 1960s against black civil rights proponents in Rock Hill, S.C. MARY ANN CHASTAIN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
One of many clocks at the home of Elwin Hope Wilson sits on a table behind a bowl of artificial eggs Wednesday, March 4, 2009, in Rock Hill, S.C. MARY ANN CHASTAIN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Elwin Hope Wilson holds a framed photograph of a mob he participated in during one of the civil rights "sit-ins" of the early 1960s in Rock Hill, S.C., during an interview at his home Wednesday, March 4, 2009, in the South Carolina town. MARY ANN CHASTAIN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
These are some of the letters of encouragement that Elwin Hope Wilson has received from strangers who read about his apology for his racist activities during the 1960s, displayed on the table in his home. MARY ANN CHASTAIN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A sign which was in the town's old bus station during an era of segregation now hangs in Elwin Hope Wilson's garage "to remind me what I did wrong." MARY ANN CHASTAIN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

1 of

User Agreement

Keep it civil and stay on topic. No profanity, vulgarity, racial
slurs or personal attacks. People who harass others or joke about
tragedies will be blocked. By posting your comment, you agree to
allow Orange County Register Communications, Inc. the right to
republish your name and comment in additional Register publications
without any notification or payment.